Course Syllabus - GIS for International Crises, Development and the Environment

New School for Public Engagement: International Affairs | Faculty: Stephen Metts | Email

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Lecture:

Lab:

Course Description:

Through weekly lectures, guided lab sessions, independent research, and a culminating final project, students will gain a working knowledge Geographic information Systems (GIS) and cartographic strategies increasingly vital to humanitarian relief, international development and climate challenges. As contemporary GIS software constitutes a predominant mapping platform across many disciplines and industries, students will gain a foothold in the practical application of this valuable software, as well as an understanding of how GIS relates to a myriad of global development issues. Further, students will develop proven skills in cartography, spatial data manipulation and analysis.

Lecture sessions will introduce students to the history, theory and capabilities of GIS in an international development and evironmental context; corresponding weekly lab sessions will guide students towards mastery of GIS skills. Each week students will work independently to complete technical assignments which draw upon spatial concepts introduced and detailed in a lecture setting. In the latter portion of the course, students will segue towards developing their own GIS project for a particular research topic in international development, humanitarian relief or environmental studies. Through the final project, students will demonstrate their mastery and integration of course concepts through the practical and technical application of GIS technology.

Course Themes:

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the semester, successful students will:


Course Theory Text - Required (required for purchase):

Course Technical Texts - Recommendations (not required for purchase):

Note: any reading materials outside the required course theory textbook will be provided to students on a weekly basis.

Course Case Studies & Cartographic Examples (not required for purchase):


Course Outline:


Class 1 | QGIS Installation and Orientation

Lecture:
  • An introduction to Cartography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) & Spatial Technology
Lab:
  • No Lab Week 1, Class 1
Assignment:
  • Installation and core interface components within QGIS.

Class 2 | Latitude & Longitude

Lecture:
  • Introduction to Vector Model, Latitude & Longitude
  • Geographic Coordinate System (GCS)
  • Spatial vs. Nonspatial data
Lab:
  • Developing & mapping Lat/Lon points - Geographic Coordinate System (GCS)
  • Working with .csv, .shp & geojson.io & .shp
Assignment:
  • Acquiring, cleaning and mapping data as Lat/Lon points features.

Class 3 | Cartographic Principles & Intro to Symbolization

Lecture:
  • Cartographic design & conventions
Lab:
  • Symbolization with QGIS
Assignment:
  • Points features & symbolization strategies

Class 4 | Thematic Mapping

Lecture:
  • Thematic Mapping
  • Data types & sources
  • Demographic Data & Maps
  • Choropleth mapping
Lab:
  • Displaying Data via Classification Schemes
  • Histograms
  • Spatial & Table Joins
  • Selections by Attributes vs Selections by Location
  • Cartographic thematic design
  • Choropleth Mapping
Assignment:
  • Thematic maps for US Census Datasets

Class 5 | Introduction to the Raster Data

Lecture:
  • Introduction to Raster Data
Lab:
  • Raster data types, manipulation and output
Assignment:
  • Mapping with Raster data

Class 6 | Map Projections

Lecture:
  • Map projections
  • Coordinate systems
  • Geodetic datums
Lab:
  • Managing & transforming projections & coordinate systems in QGIS
Assignment:
  • Mapping in the UTM system; advantages of planar units in GIS
  • Solving common map projection problems

Class 7 | Geoprocessing

Lecture:
  • Introduction to Geoprocessing
Lab:
  • Geoprocessing tools
  • Feature proximity, overlay & extraction operations
  • Classifying spatial data via spatial operations
Assignment:
  • Analysis Case Study- Kosovo landmines and unexploded ordnance

Class 8 | Mapping Vulnerability

Lecture:
  • Mapping vulnerability model
Lab:
  • Mapping and assessing risk & vulnerable populations - National Tornado Vulnerability
Assignment:
  • Vulnerability Mapping - thematic topic TBD

Class 9 | Suitability Analysis

Lecture:
  • Multi-criteria suitability analysis
  • Site selection
Lab:
  • Mapping and assessing suitability
Assignment:
  • Suitability Model for GIS - Ugandan Civil War & IDP Camp Suitability

Class 10 | Participatory GIS

Lecture:
  • Participatory GIS
  • Volunteered geographic information- VGI
  • Collaborative, online mapping platforms
  • OpenStreetMap (OSM)
Lab:
  • Collaborative web-based GIS tools
  • Feature editing in desktop & web-based environments
Assignment:
  • Developing VGI - Editing tools in OSM

Class 11 | Remote Sensing & Image Classification

Lecture:
  • Remote Sensing (RS) Technology and Raster Classification
Lab:
  • Displaying & manipulating multi-band rasters
  • Working with single-band, classified rasters
  • Land cover data
  • Categorical raster data manipulation
  • Introduction to global scale land cover products
Assignment:
  • Working with LandSat imagery
  • Classification techniques for RS imagery
  • Change over Time (temporal comparison) with RS imagery

Class 12 | Remote Sensing Indices, density surfaces & interpolation

Lecture:
  • Common environmental indices in RS
Lab:
  • Introduction to RS indices
  • Creating of density surfaces (heat maps)
Assignment:
  • RS Indices | RS Land Surface Temperature Assessment (LST)

Materials:

During each class session, reading materials, GIS files and your notes can be on your local computer; materials and course access will happen generally online via Canvas and Slack. For moving GIS files and research materials back and forth, a USB drive is ideal. Further, online storage such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon Cloud Drive is encouraged. Course lecture topics, readings and in-class exercise data will be available via the online course management location (Canvas); however, each student will be required to organize and maintain their own GIS data files, especially pertaining to the final project. These files should be consistently backed up across multiple locations.


Course Policies:


Evaluation and Grading:

Course Component Percentage
Weekly GIS technical assignments 50%
Independent research, data development & project scope (Final Project) 10%
Final GIS project presentation (Final Project) 30%
Participation & weekly quizzes 10%
Total 100%

Grading Categories: